Touchstone 2021 by Hatter Network

TOUCHSTONE 2021

TOUCHSTONE

TOUCHSTONE 2021

CONTACT US touchsto@stetson.edu Touchstone Literary & Arts Journal Stetson English Department 421 N. Woodland Blvd Unit 8300 DeLand, FL 32723

TOUCHSTONE

5 TOUCHSTONE Touchstone 2021 literary and creative arts journal is a production of Hatter Network. Hatter Network is the student media collective at Stetson University. For more information, visit: www.hatternetwork.com

STAFF STAFF LIST:

Lisa Jorda Noach McGahagin Xanthippe Pack-Brown

SELECTION COMMITTEE: Danielle Moore Katherine Orfinger Rachel Harrison Veronica Bautista

EDITORS:

René Campbell Executive Editor Vivianne Skavlem Associate Editor

DESIGNERS:

Isabel Solorzano Ruby Rosenthal

FACULTY ADVISOR: Andy Denhart

SPECIAL THANKS: Crystal Baroni

COVER:

“Paper Voyage” by Destiny Rodriguez

TOUCHSTONE

DEAR READERS,

I am so proud to tell you that you have officially begun reading the 41st edition of Touchstone, Stetson’s student-run literary and arts journal. Proud I write, not just because this is number 41, but proud because despite all of the challenges of a global pandemic, the arts have prevailed. After last year, the continuation of this challenging time was not something that was foreseen, nor was putting out another magazine. Our team decided to defy the odds yet again. It was never a question of “if ” we were going to make it work, but rather a “how.”

As a poet, I am in awe of my complete lack of ability to piece together just how grateful I am for our team, our Touchstone family. We have been through a lot in order to make this publication a reality: long meetings, late night Facetime calls, texts at odd hours, and even Slack message spams (and memes). The immense efforts put in by our family makes this publication that much more special.

Thank you to our wonderful designers: Izzy Solorzano and Ruby Rosenthal. Without your guidance and crash-courses on InDesign, and leadership on the design front, this journal would not be the beauty that it is. We could not have given these works such a beautiful home without you. And last but not least, thank you to all of you- the readers of our publication. The creative students, Uncouth attenders, supportive parents, Stetson faculty members, or maybe even just curious minds. Without readers of our publication, our efforts to share the voices of creative students would be in vain. Thank you for loving the arts and for loving the work that these artists have poured their hearts and souls into. 2021 has been yet another year of uncertainty. It has been a continuation of hardship and unexpected times. My hope is that Touchstone 2021 is a piece of comfort. Let the works featured in this publication remind you that there is hope even in the darkest of times. As creators, we must remind ourselves and those around us that this journey through life, although difficult, is one of beauty and I truly believe Touchstone 2021 was able to accomplish just that.

ALL MY THANKS, RENÉ CAMPBELL

TOUCHSTONE

Thank you to our small, but mighty staff: Lisa Jordan, Noah McGahagin, and Xanthippe PackBrown. When I was tasked with building a new staff from scratch (and remotely), I honestly did not have high hopes. I felt that I had a nearly impossible task in front of me. You all proved me wrong. Even with remote communication only, you all have been a shining light in my lifefilling my job with lots of laughs and hard work. I could not be more thankful.

With that being said, I would like to give special thanks to Vivianne Skavlem, our associate editor. Without her immense drive and probably too much caffeine, this book would not be in your hands. Thank you, Vivianne, for being my partner-in-crime and for giving me a good laugh, even when times were tough. Also, my special thanks to Crystal Baroni, our coordinator and designated “Hatter Network Mom.” Thank you Crystal for helping make my transition to executive editor not so intimidating and for always being there for me- even if being there meant 9a.m. rants on a Tuesday.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

If Autumn Was a Woman - Willie Bess pg. 11 St. Augustine Poem - Katherine Orfinger pg. 12 Glas Wen - Alexis Waller pg. 13 A Tribute to The Flightless - Stephanie Hanson pg. 14 Floating Ribs - Xanthippe Pack-Brown pg. 19 Confessions of an Intern - Sarah Payne pg. 20 What are you looking for? - Alexis Waller pg. 21 Too Tight Gym Clothes - Ally Crown pg. 22 A Middle Eastern Poem - Ruby Rosenthal pg. 23 Quiet Moments - Maia Robbins pg. 24 Haunted - Lisa Jordon pg. 25 For the Sun Always Finds a Way - Xanthippe Pack-Brown pg. 26 Sunflower Daydreams - Cullen Harkins pg. 27 Honeycomb High - Rene Campbell pg. 30 Serotonin - Vivianne Skavlem pg. 31

TOUCHSTONE

P O E T R Y

A Florida Winter Wonderland - Nicanor Vergara pg. 50 Race to the Fallen Peanut Shell - Ansley McCoy pg. 56 Esme - Madison Broboff pg. 58 Babel - Desiree Ascevich pg. 62 High Society Loses Altitude - Kim Frederick Heller III pg. 67

pg. 34 Strike at Sunrise - Isabella DeRienzo pg. 36 Paper Voyage - Destiny Rodriguez pg. 37 Tootsie - Faith Elizabeth Belflower pg. 38 In Quiet Rooms - Destiny Rodriguez pg. 40 Call of the Trees - Faith Elizabeth Belflower pg. 41 Ghost of Campus Past Jillian Semmel pg. 42 Loneliness - Marisa Ingram pg. 44 Eat Me - Raven McCain pg. 46 Disfigure - Destiny Rodriguez pg. 47 Stranger in the Sand Isabella DeRienzo pg. 48 Tracing Tromso... Reminiscing on a time before the pandemic - Isabella DeRienzo

P R O S E

TOUCHSTONE

V I S U A L

POETRY 10

If Autum Was a Woman WILLIE BESS

POETRY

Your bastard sister, Spring, Lies lonely in a house of decaying wood And you sit comfortably Drinking your seasonal cider, Your glass tucked warmly Between your slender thighs.

Sweet breath of wine And hair made of fallen leaves The wind in your walk Tells me you were born from this season, The pleasant chill in your smile Wraps its icy arms Around my heart And my throat Suffocating me with infatuation.

St. Augustine Poem KATHERINE ORFINGER

We turn a corner. And I wonder what goes on here? Myriad tiny windows into tiny lives, tables and chairs containing universes, the Christmas lights, and your freckled shoulders. We turn a corner. Guitar strings, coffee cans, the glorious jangling of change, cigarette butts, all the grit and glamour of being human. We turn a corner. And my senses return to me. I smell smoke and chocolate

POETRY

and liquor. I smell sweat and aftershave and gasoline. I smell someone else’s life and the perfume my mother wore to synagogue on special nights. My voice, too, returns to me. We are not that different, not too far gone. The tired waitress wilts on her feet, she waits for the night to be through with her. The evening rolls on, the cosmos continue to spin. Eternity utters a day. It’s not a bad life.

Glas Wen

ALEXIS WALLER A glass wren resides in the nest of my mother’s drawers Red velvet lining for sticks and pearls for eyes

Time does not exist for those kept within the confines of your mother’s drawers

And what of you with jail cells made of stone? With your songs seeped red and your smile bleeding blue? What of you then? I must think of my mother’s glass wren with its sanded wings made terribly thin they cannot fly but They can bite Yet they shatter at a drop, at the sound of a pin against the floorboards So they must never see the floor

sky?

of the

And what

POETRY

Especially not the birds but what Would you know of cages made of gold?

Tribute to the Flightless STEPHANIE HANSON December 15, 2019. I come across a carcass in the misty Alabama woods. It’s made of metal, not flesh, but to me it hardly makes a difference. Up the ridge and there it is, beside the trail, evidence of a spilled human dream, sprawled out vulnerably in misshapen metal pieces of blues and whites on a bed of soft browned leaves. My gut twists and crumples like that place where the cockpit was. Trust me, I tried to rewind time, unbending metal and healing flaking paint, until it’s whole again in my mind, an aircraft aloft above the trees. But imagination is no cure for fate. It took me longer than one might think to realize that this fractured machine was a plane. I guess I was hoping it was a car, lodged in those woods from an adventure gone only slightly too wrong. I guess I was hoping to avoid imagining what it would be like to fall from the sky, a catapulting animal reduced to the base functions of a flightless human body of flesh and blood. The thought of a death alone in the woods, burdened by this realization of human fragility in a moment of heart-stopping fear, seemed too much to bear. My dad cracks my dream of a car crash: a two-seater maybe, see the way the wings crumpled? As if in answer, the wind whispers through dead branches, tickling my eardrums; the haunting voice of winter. The loud patter of squirrel claws on brown fallen leaves echoes sharply through the metal before me. The scratching sound reminds me of inked paper ripping slowly disintegrating into tiny pieces under an eager hand. I walk towards the rubble, wish the woods silent. These woods need to be silent. A quiet to match the silence of that empty metal frame. The wings of the plane have become silent accordions, an instrument crafted by a rapid descent from the sky, folded into neat crinkles by the ancient trees. The tail is bent under, the metal frame of the seats jutting out of the rustedout front.

POETRY

How morbid is it to rob a gravesite?

15 POETRY

I pull out my camera. I want to remember. Is it wrong to take pictures of a gravesite? Dad starts to walk away. I want to stay. I want to collect red leaves, mossy branches; a winter bouquet. A tribute. I feel him pulling me to follow. I leave reluctantly and let the mist mourn. *** A week later that skeleton of a plane still haunts my mind. It’s the black smoke that creeps in when I’m not looking. I wonder who you were, who you would have been. I try to imagine what it must have felt like, to fall from the sky, to trust in a machine only to have it abandon you when you need it most. It seems like a common fault of man, to trust in our own genius. I try to recreate the scene on paper, in my head, maybe to pay tribute to whoever you were, maybe to try to imagine a life cut short by the scrap of metal against the forest and the air’s refusal to hold a thing aloft. Maybe trying to satiate the restlessness that comes with not knowing how to formulate an image of you in my mind, with not knowing how to pay my respects to you. Eventually, I look up the crash online, search: Cheaha State Park Pinhoti Trail plane crash. I also find: “Kids enjoyed checking out the plane wreckage.” “…when we discovered that it was a Mooney we were excited and fascinated beyond belief.” “Be sure to check out the plane crash near the pinnacle overlook area.” Maybe I am the only one of the many before who felt that place’s heavy pull of death, who felt the trees wrap them in a black velvet cloak that invited in the cold instead of keeping it out. It looks like people have taken parts of the plane- some siding that was in the video I never saw in real life.

It turns out the trees became your gravesite in 1972. Reports say you were a 50-year-old man who took off in a Mooney M20C from the dusty, arid town of Longview, Texas with intentions to make it to Marietta, Georgia. Flight records say that somewhere in Alabama you encountered inclement weather. Maybe the clouds grew heavy and congregated against your windshield, or maybe the tears of the sky were blowing sideways out of heavy grey clouds. I guess we will never really know. Apparently, you weren’t certified to fly at night or in bad weather. But they say you lowered the plane so you could see. They say that rocky point took you by surprise. They say there was fire after impact. Date of death: 12/26/1972. They don’t say whether you had radioed in. Called family. Did you even have time? Who was expecting you in Marietta, Georgia? Where you planning to visit family? Going to a wedding, going hiking, coming back from Christmas celebrations with family? Were you just out for a joy ride? Two days you sat in the silence of death. Aircraft recovered: 12/28/1972.

***

I wonder how many other shards of broken flights are in these woods, this world, made callous by time and the stench of greed.

human

and

*** curiosity Some history is a bird without wings. A flightless thing that weighs heavy in dusty library books and on pages in a too glossy textbook chapter. But at least this kind of history is alive, if still wingless. There is some history that just lays buried, dead and flightless and left to rot, like that Mooney M20C I came across on the trail.

POETRY

17 POETRY

That kind of history is forced to wait until someone comes along and decides whether to honor it or take it out of greed. That is the problem with history. I was listening to a podcast episode recently: The Seed Jar. A tale of two men, a desert, and buried history. These two men had set out alone in a red painted, dusty Utah canyon, scrambling over sandstone and slickrock, trekking towards the unknown. Mid-day, they sat down on a rock, baking gently in the sun. Their backpacks came off, and reaching down to the ground, one man finds an alcove. A moment of confusion. Then awe. Rapt attention. A Native American clay jar with faded, black paint and a crack through its middle. Grass twine holding it together. Just like time and the elements had held this jar together for thousands of years. Perhaps this jar was hidden there in a hurry; you, the owner, leaving in a rush thousands of years ago with the intention returning. Did you feel the fear of an attack? Anticipate a sudden storm, a flood? What a beautiful, mysterious tragedy of culture. This jar was like a newspaper clipping of time slipped into the rocks, a time capsule rendered immobile by the parched desert. That desert that never cries in raindrops but keeps a tight hold on history as a comfort instead. After a silence, the men debated: leave the jar and risk its subjection to the greed of another, but keeping its story pure, or take the jar to protect it but forever alter its story. Untouched, they left it. *** This jar, in its death, is still flightless, but now alive. It has been returned to life through these words moving from my headphones to my ears to my brain. I wonder how many other clay fragments lay scattered in that desert, on this earth. I wonder how many are undiscovered, how many have been seen but left untouched, and how many have been smudged by

the callous curiosity and greed.

hands

*** Is this resurrection of stories a sort of justice? Or a disruption? Somehow a fingerprint on a broken airplane or an ancient seed jar feels wrong, like a marring of time, a stealing of one piece of time and inserting into the present. But is attempting to tell you the pilot or you the seed jar owner’s story with words any better? Is it a satisfactory memorial? Is it a memorial for you and your story or for the satisfaction of my own peace and curiosity? Should we honor the fragments of the past and leave them untouched? Or should they become part of our own history? Then again, how many things do we pass by everyday that are a part of a flightless, dead history? Probably too many. You, the pilot passed away, you the lost seed jar owner, do I have license to retell your rich stories from facts and material evidence alone? I am not sure, but I tried my best to resurrect you and give you wings. Is it too much to assume that you would have wanted to emerge from death into life and be given wings? Maybe you would have rather stayed dead and flightless. We will never know. I am sorry if you had hoped not to spend eternity in the ink on this page. *** Tell

please. you want

me,

to stay lodged in a capsule of time or do you want someone to pick up the fragments of your story and piece them back together like pieces of broken china on a dusty floor? Do not worry, I will be the glue if you ask me to.

POETRY

Floating Ribs

XANTHIPPE PACK-BROWN

I was so small. sulking in the marrow, spreading all over.

marked by side effects of numbness,

You were so small. But the heaviness was there,

Smooth and cold.

in my bare hands.

It would have years to fester, glowing a melancholic blue.

POETRY

I’ve held your bones

Confessions of an Intern SARAH PAYNE

In the museum I ache to give everything a full-handed squeeze— to pilfer it in my pocketses, to destroy it from the inside. Interactive or reactive? Modern art Lincoln log dollhouses crumble in my hands. I need to kiss the faces in the canvases, put my clothes in the dressers of dead people, & then drink that unopened champagne from the ’53 Indy 500. Better with age? Unanswered. Untouched, Venus-to-Virgin Rapunzel. Despite who it says I am on my nametag, I am an erupting Vesuvius in curator’s clothes.

POETRY

What are you looking for? ALEXIS WALLER

What Are You Looking For? Instructions: write a poem out of the words you ﬁrst see.

L O S T A R S C A B T E S T B L E S S M I E O U B E L O W E W A I T I N G A L O T D S F O R L I O L I V E E T E E D I R B I B S V A S M A L L I L T E G T I M N I D E S E R V E H O W T O H O L D S O I

E N O W O R L D S O L L U R R G R N H G

D E F A T H E R S W H A T E K I A R T N

P H E Y E V I L I E S A I D I N N E R A O D E R N A B D E A T H S I S T E R S I L I H L A G A L A S S E P A R A T E I N O B I B L E R B S I L L E A P S E I C E G I V E O D B E T W E E N B R I A G K W I D A L S I E G O E A N E Y A D N N L B E D C L S M D R E A R Y S P Y L O E E O S I A I E A I O P E N A M O R E D R V R A N N E E P P L E A S E M P T Y A V A N W G T S P G O O D B Y E S U S I L E N T your answers:

POETRY

A V R H M A N A L W A Y S E A E T H E R

Too Tight Gym Clothes ALLY CROWN

On Saturday morning, you skip breakfast to make time for a morning run. The bananas you bought will still be waiting on the counter for when you get back. But you’re sweaty, so you peel yourself from the too tight gym clothes you bought (and keep telling yourself you’ll lose enough weight to wear them properly) and letting the water wash away the morning. It’s noon, and the water is no longer enough to quiet your rumbling stomach, so you cave and make half a protein shake. It’s only a whisper now as you let Netflix distract you enough to forget the pains. Whatever energy sleep provided you with is gone by 3 pm, so you drink a cup of black coffee with two sugars. It’s now dinner time, and the smell from the food your family is making finds its way into your bedroom. The oversized hoodie hides your thinning arms and excess of body hair while you take the smallest dinner portion possible. Everything’s okay. You say “no thank you” to dessert and excuse yourself from the table. The water filling your bathtub perfectly muffles the sounds you make while hunched over the toilet. Everything is empty. You almost feel proud of yourself, but the spider in the corner of the ceiling seems to ask, “Did you eat today?”

POETRY

A Middle Eastern Poem RUBY ROSENTHAL

POETRY

I have already figured out what I’m supposed to do but it’s probably because it’s been told to me before because I listen and don’t respond. My mother said I can’t call myself Middle-Eastern because then they’ll think I’m a terrorist. Who is they? In the Middle East I’m not allowed to wear my shorts up to there or tell a man I’ve had it up to here. In the Middle East they call me a frantic feminist because I talk wildly with my hands and refuse to serve men who refuse to serve me. In the Middle East men in scary uniforms are allowed to stop our bus take our IDs and make sure we’re all supposed to be here and this is totally normal. In the Middle East I can’t say that about the president even if it’s true because what if he’s listening and did I know that I could go to jail if I say one more word. In the Middle East there is no such thing as an opinion if you’re below the age of 24 and a woman. In the Middle East there are no waitresses no actresses only mistresses and missusses. But this is all fine. At least no one will ever think I’m a terrorist.

after Eileen Myles

Quiet Moments MAIA ROBBINS In the quiet moments of the day,

when the work is done and there’s nothing to say, the mind wanders to the alternative imaginings that could’ve occurred had life taken things down the path of a different way. It brings up the past and the people once known, spinning tales of “what if ” or “wow, how you’ve grown”. It’s times like these when you entertain the fact that maybe if you had done all this or said all that, you wouldn’t be feeling so alone. Sometimes the mind will play out a scene of your life had you not gotten in between a fight or a spat with the people you knew.

Then the guilt comes in and turns you all blue as you imagine an argument where you’re not so keen.

POETRY

There will also be songs that play to the heart. Your mind will rewind them as soon as they start. The melody will draw countless pictures of love that are translated to wishes for the stars above, as your soul searches for the believed missing part. Your future is a common act the mind can perform. It’s then when you break or change a social norm. You might see yourself at work, ten years older with a home and someone special who’s also grown older. You’ll think of this future while you dawdle in your dorm. In the quiet moments of the day, when the work is done and there’s nothing to say, my mind wonders at the mindless voices

and what could occur if I make my choices for the path of a different way.

Haunted

LISA JORDAN

Your reflection dances off of glimmering blue waters: cool in the July heat. I see you in the faint glare of windows, on buses and in cars. I hear your voice ringing in the night’s wind. It’s bizarre how on the coldest mornings, I’m deluded just momentarily, half-dreaming that

You looked at me in hatred and greed, untold in your feigned adoration𑁋 while I stared up at you in deep love, and affection, and fear; haunted by your words and your actions. In the morning, in the day, but especially in the night when I hear the rain falling outside, deep in the darkness, disturbing the earth’s

slumber. It’s as harsh as your voice, swelling in my ear on the phone, in the church, in your kitchen. The drops sting as I reach my hand out of my window, collecting the water in my palm that you once held, and kissed, and desecrated. We were a part of something so beautiful𑁋 and so disturbing. Nausea rises and overtakes whenever I remember. No longer happy, no longer comforted, no longer welcomed. I can only be haunted.

again, I’m wrapped in that green, scratchy comforter, while you wait downstairs with breakfast on the table and keys already in your hand.

POETRY

It’s strange how on the brightest days, in the warmest air, I’m troubled by your shadow; it follows me, it brushes my hair and lays its fingers softly on my shoulder𑁋 and its palms sharply against my cheek.

For the Sun Always Finds a Way XANTHIPPE PACK-BROWN “I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.” -Toni Morrison As I am leaving the movie theatre After treating myself to a solo movie date, A child runs in front of me Screaming almost causing me to face plant. An older couple on a night out, Spills their popcorn. I carefully step around the mess. A young man on his phone With a rather intimidating cup of soda, Walks right into me, spilling His drink down my shirt. It felt like Armageddon in that movie theatre. I step outside onto the sidewalk, When I could finally feel it. The release of the sun on my skin And the breeze rushing by my ears. The way the sun feels on your skin after stepping out Of the cold chaos that was that movie theatre, Is like a love that lifts you up. The warmth envelops you, for the sun always finds a way. Tiptoeing down your arms, Dancing down your neck, shoulders, and back. Building up to the moment when it will sweep you up. Suspending you in that liminal space between the treetops And the dark clouds just before a storm. So, you stay there, Suspended in the air. Letting the sun kiss the freckles on your cheeks and the tip of your nose. It holds your hand and lets you know, That you are worthy of this love, This light, This warmth, That holds you here.

POETRY

Sunflower Daydreams

POETRY

In a saccharine summer haze, I confessed that I loved them. My mind at that moment was sure that I meant it. Really, it was reality detached dalliance with my contrived conception of them. My infatuation was unrequited, they informed me of that. However, their negations were nebulous, never “noes”, instead: “not yets”. I placed hope in their placations and ignored their indifference, content to spend my summer with a softened gaze and a set heart. Hard set, I sought to pretend and believe in a sunflower daydream. ***** Sunflowers have always been my favorite. Their radiant petals have long since invited my affection. Their proud, brilliant yellow enthrals my awe and anchors my optimism. In their yawning brown bloom I sense serenity. Similar in a sense to incense from a censer, a cloud of petals encompasses their dark center. When they said we shared the same fondness for sunflowers, a symbolic synapse sparked and their name became a sunflower synonym. Submerged in a sea of suspended disbelief, I scrawled for them the following stanza: Your smile I compare to a sunflower field brightness unyielded the warmth of an uncountable sum of sunflowers This scribbled sentiment was never sent to them; it’s a severed stem from my heart’s sunflower garden. It’s been soaking in water from when my heart was fonder and fading

CULLEN HARKINS

away in a vase. Mistaken by a mirage in the heat of my dream, I drowned their roots and flooded the ground beneath them. The love from the cup of my heart running over eroded their earth. The soil on the surface seemed slaked by my sentiments, but beneath and unbeknownst, my passions were pooling. Above and oblivious, I continued to care for them, but the way the sunlight refracted through the shower distracted me, so I didn’t see the water bend and break the stem. I told them I would wait for them. I told them they were incomparable. I told them their blush could shame sunset pink clouds. I told them my commitment to our companionship was unconditional. I told them that they inspired me, in spite of their mired history, none of which I dare repeat out of courtesy to their privacy. Delusion. The adoring allusions I spun were met with feigned amusement. Illusion Idolization of an idealization borne of my ever-active imagination. When my daily ritual of wishing them well began to fail to elicit their attention, I thought nothing. When I needed to glean that they were evading the plans I was making, I saw nothing. When I reached out, wrecked from wrestling depression, for a friend, I got nothing. Then, in that moment, all the days and nights that I dropped my life to stand beside them in their fight were for naught, nothing. My cry for help was met with abject apathy, my platonic plea was seen, read and forgotten. Nothing. Perhaps it was necessary of them to dash my passion against reality, as I am now aware that it can be squandered. Without their lack of concern I would have never accepted nor discerned that some people aren’t worth the water they siphon from my cistern. Days later, disenchanted and disappointed, I disavowed my desire. Mortified, I formulated a parting apology.

POETRY

29 POETRY

Finally, I acknowledged the fault lines forming in my fracturing, fragile fantasy. I addressed the pressure manifesting from my perception of them, admitting that my smitten state was based on a misguided, misgiven intention: a misreading of the attention I was getting. I offered them honest hopes and best regards with my goodbye. Three days later they dare deign to reply--a halfhearted sigh of platitudinous lies when I realized I thrived in their radio silence. After withering and pretending to wish me well, I picked and planted them in their vase. And so they remain: contained by a vessel more fragile than themself. Detained in a heart of fool’s gold and glass. They no longer have a place in my garden. ***** Enough time has passed that the stem sits shriveled in its glass, ready to decompose in the compost of emotions past. The associated dismay and tumult will decay into mulch to cultivate the seed of myself. My own sunflower, planted here, on this page. Sown in sincere reality to spurn an insincere summer surreality. ***** The season has shifted, the seed has germinated. Through patience, my pain has been rehabilitated. Now daybreak is overtaking the horizon of my heart. Shooting skyward shall my sprout of self soon start. My sturdy sunflower stem is strengthened by lessons learned from the one it supplanted. I planted it in the plot of my heart in a spot once dark that now is awashed with daylight. My radiant petals fan out from my serene center, radiating my radical yellow. I have grown to reject the fallacy of my sunflower daydreams. My face has turned heavenward. I will now bask in the sunbeams

Serotonin VIVIANNE SKAVLEM

POETRY

Risen onto Noise torn Iron notes Or in onset

Inner soot Is neon rot In tones or In stone or In one rots No one stir No sin tore Tension or Iron net so Eons in rot

POETRY

Rose not in Iron stone Not in ores Or in stone

To no siren O sinner to Tone or sin Noon rites Neon riots

Honeycomb High RENÉ CAMPBELL Black and yellow buzz by soon to spend summertime salvation, can we escape this honeycomb high? Just yesterday, I watched a garden die, earth grabbing petals without hesitation. Black and yellow buzz by between the branch and sky is a lie a creator’s illustration, can we escape this honeycomb high? Tomorrow, bluebirds bid their wings goodbye, along with a declining nation. Black and yellow buzz by Today, mouths are dry, tired of questioning their foundation, Can we escape this honeycomb high? A universal sigh searching for salvation. Black and yellow buzz by Can we escape this honeycomb high?

POETRY

VISUAL VISUAL

Strike at Sunrise ISABELLA DERIENZO

VISUAL

Paper Voyage

DESTINY RODRIGUEZ

VISUAL

Tootsie

VISUAL

FAITH ELIZABETH BELFLOWER

In Quiet Rooms DESTINY RODRIGUEZ

VISUAL

Call of the Trees

FAITH ELIZABETH BELFLOWER

VISUAL

Ghost of Campus Past

VISUAL

JILLIAN SEMMEL

Loneliness MARISA INGRAM

VISUAL

Eat Me RAVEN MCCAIN

VISUAL

Disfigure DESTINY RODRIGUEZ

VISUAL

Stranger in the Sand

VISUAL

ISABELLA DERIENZO

Tracing to Tromsø… Reminiscing on a time before ISABELLA DERIENZO

VISUAL

PROSE

Esme

MADISON BROBOFF

Esme had said her goodbyes, already. But only she knew. She heard the words as they escaped her lips. “Good night.” But it was more than that, and it was less, and it hurt for her to say. Telling someone goodnight implies that a good morning will follow. And she would have no such pleasure. After she said it, shutting the bedroom door behind her, her vision began to blur. It wasn’t until she blinked, and the room became clear again, that she realized it was because of the tears in her eyes. They rolled down her flushed cheeks, and she swiped them away feverishly. She didn’t have much time. But still, it all felt nearly impossible, walking over to the window beside her bed, yanking it open enough to fit through, sliding both feet over and onto the grass below. Not that she hadn’t done it a thousand times before. No, that wasn’t the problem. The latch on the rail of the window moved with ease under her touch, the grass felt soft beneath her feet. But her hand hesitated as she went to close the window, and she couldn’t explain it, really, but she couldn’t close it, not all the way. So, she left it, because she had to go, and because maybe, just maybe, a trace of her would come back, find its way back home through the crack in the window. Esme’s walk was long, and however much she wished to be alone, her thoughts were unwanted company. How could she know if this would even work? She passed by her old schoolhouse, and the church. She thought of the people crowding the benches inside, hiding from their own mistakes. When the church bells rang out to mark the hour, she didn’t bother to count. The growing darkness, the sun disappearing from the sky—it told her all she needed to know. She kept moving. She knew her way to the forest well enough, despite always being told to stay away. Everyone was. “There is evil in the wind, and in the soil, and we cannot say what will happen to you once you venture inside of those woods,”they would all tell their children. It only made her want to go there more. How naive it was! How naive to tell a child something, and not expect them to do the opposite.Soon, the buildings turned to oak trees, and the grass grew taller, and wilder, around her. The stone path beneath her feet crumbled, leaving nothing but a trail of dirt to guide her feet. She knew she was close, now. And when she stumbled on a pile of acorns, left hastily behind by some forest critter, she could hear her mother, telling her,

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with laughter still in her voice, “Little Esme, you move too fast for your own two feet.” And then, when the dirt path disappeared altogether, Esme looked up. She stared into the abyss, all of the leaves on the trees glowing gold against the light of the moon, the tangled branches fading into the black of night. Although the sky was dark, Esme saw subtle strokes of blue and purple, and scattered specks of white way up above, and she imagined the colors at the tip of a paintbrush in her mother’s gentle hand, her slender frame leaning against a canvas, her face furrowed in concentration. She would have loved to paint this, Esme thought, and she couldn’t stop herself from thinking, I’ll have to tell her about it, too. For a moment, things felt calm. Looking up at the sky, leaves falling at her feet and a breeze whistling in her hair, she almost forgot why she came here in the first place. But then she took a step forward, and the brittle foliage cracked beneath her weight, and with it, the night shifted.

Curious as it was, it watched her as she moved closer, carefully, slowly. Watched her grasp at the trunks of trees to guide her way and trip on the branches and twigs that lay at her feet. Her kind, they couldn’t see very well in the night. This it knew. The girl was close, now. But she stopped, and it saw in her eyes that she was looking for something. That feverish gaze, unmistakable. And then she turned, and looked straight at it, and that’s when it realized. She was looking for it. And so, it reached out to her. A mess of fog and static and emptiness against her cheek. Against flesh and blood. Who are you? it purred, and it watched, with something almost akin to pleasure, as she recoiled, just slightly, against its touch. She did not answer. But it didn’t need her to. It saw. It saw the girl, smaller, younger. Leaned up against the trunk of a large tree,

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It saw her, as she came. A girl with youth in her eyes and a determination that it seldom had the pleasure to witness. Usually it saw them old and frail, perhaps fighting but still, always so dull, so boring. She was different, this girl. And it did not expect to see her, or anyone, for that matter, here. Who was she?

The wind howled in her ears, the leaves that still held tight onto their branches shook with rage, and the cold, unforgiving air pushed against her as she struggled to keep moving, into the forest. But she had to keep going, and so she did.

reading a book, as a woman sat down beside her. She took the girl’s head in her hands, gently, and kissed her on the forehead. And there was the girl, again, laughing as this woman searched for her, in cabinets and in closets, seemingly oblivious to her giggles from underneath a bed. A game, it had learned at some time or another, called hide and seek. But, wait. The woman. The two had the same eyes, and shared a smile, but she was much older, with eyes not quite as bright, the lines in her face much more pronounced. The girl’s mother, it decided. It saw this woman, now laying atop this bed from before, her face pale and her breath shallow. The girl knocked on the door, and came in, carrying a bowl filled with something hot, steaming. She was older, much more like the girl that stood in front of it now, in the forest. And she smiled, but it did not quite reach her eyes, and she averted her gaze quickly. Her hands shook as she handed over the bowl, and she kissed her mother gently on the cheek. It turned away, now. It had seen enough. Esme felt colder than she had ever felt before. And this wasn’t a cold that could be fixed with a coat and a scarf. It was inside. Eating away at her. She felt numb. But then, just as sudden, feeling and warmth returned to her body, and the darkness, no, the emptiness, that had stood in front of her moments before, returned. She hadn’t even realized it was gone. But, where? Was it insideof her? She shuddered at the thought, but somehow, just barely, she managed to keep her face still, her gaze steady. She hoped it would listen to her, if it could hear her at all. I know why you are here. Death. It was just a rumor, whispered around the classroom at school, years ago. Back then, she listened with bated breath and wide eyes, eager to pass the story along as soon as it was finished. They told her that death itself lived in that forest, and that’s why no one was allowed inside. Especially at night. Because at night, that’s when it sought out the old, and the sick, and it came into town to take them away. But, they added, their voices barely a whisper, if death found you in the forest, it would take you instead. “Then, please. Help me.”Her voice wavered, as hard as she tried to stop it from

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doing so. The darkness stirred, shifting and moving around her. Thinking, maybe. If it was even capable of such a thing. You must know that it is not so easy. Esme had watched, as painful as it was, as her mother grew more and more sick. She remembered the old story, and as impossible as it seemed, she knew she had to try. If something, anything, could work, she had to try. So, she waited, until her mother could barely move, and her eyes glazed over, and she no longer took the broth that Esme tried so hard to make her eat. She waited until she was sure that death would be coming. And now, here she was. “You misunderstand me. I am not asking for favors. I’m asking for a trade.” At that, the darkness stood still, and she knew she had its attention.

Her life for yours.

“Her life, for mine.”

A trade.

No favors. A trade.

It was excited. It never had visitors. And, suddenly, here was this girl, asking for a deal, begging for its help. Tempting. She was young, eyes still full of life. So much life. Bright and rich and vivid. You mean to give your life away? “For my mother, I would give anything.” Her mother. Sick and wilting, dreary, faded. Not enough life left in her to satisfy it. There rarely ever was. It could spare her. It could. It is not a fair trade. “Please, I will do anything!”

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Your life. Her life.

It did not understand. It could never understand, the way her kind thought. Why? So much life, for so little. It had heard of love, and perhaps that played a part. But it would never know for certain. It would always wonder, and perhaps that’s why it gave her another chance. To reconsider. It is not a fair trade, for you. Esme felt tears sting at her eyes. Her hands trembled, as the darkness ebbed and flowed around her. Its words echoed in her head, thrummed against her skull, and the words made her think, and thinking made her fear rise up in her throat. The fear of no longer being here, or anywhere, of not existing at all. The fear of death, even as she stood and faced it. Would it be painful? Would it hurt? Her thoughts kept coming, and the questions grew louder and louder, and she had no answers to them, and it frightened her. But then she thought of her mother, never quite there, always struggling to catch her breath. Always sick. That’s what wasn’t fair. Esme lived her life, while her mother clung to hers with shaking hands, trembling fingers. She stood on top of the cliff, watching the person she loved most trying to keep hold of the edge. “Will you spare her life? Will she know the peace of dying of old age, and not of disease?”Her words spilled out of her, before she could think to stop them. It was all she had thought about, for every waking moment, for so long. She wanted to make it true. Esme felt the cold again, on her fingertips and her cheeks and then suddenly all around her, and she knew that the darkness was there. Waiting, like a cat stalking its prey. Ready to pounce. Just say the word. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready.But was anyone ever ready?Was her mother? Her mother, planting poppies, Esme’s favorite, in the garden, until her hands could no longer grasp the shovel. Hugging Esme at the door, every day, when

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she returned home from school, even when she needed the doorframe to support her, until she couldn’t stand at all. Always smiling, so as not to cause a fuss, although Esme saw the way her breath caught, the way she froze, when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Esme watched as the light faded from her mother’s eyes, dreading the day she would wake up and find it gone. But she never did.

“I’m ready.” The darkness came toward her, then, and she felt it in her nostrils and in her veins and underneath her fingertips, and she was so cold, and then she was empty, and she couldn’t feel anything, and the idea of that would have frightened her if she had any thoughts left to have, and then she wasn’t even there at all. Esme was gone, as if she was never there in the first place, but for a moment, if you had been there in the forest that night, the darkness might have seemed a little more substantial, a bit more there, than it had been before. And you could shake your head and say that’s nothing, but then again—the next morning, her mother felt better than she had in years, and Esme was nowhere to be found.

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On those days, especially, Esme saw all of the life that her mother still had in her. All of the places she hadn’t gone, all of the people she hadn’t met. Her mother still wanted to live. She needed more time. And Esme wasn’t ready, but she knew that nobody ever was. So, she lied, same as her mother had lied to her, to protect her. To save her.

There was always something holding on, something inside her fighting, and though some days it was harder to see, barely there, some days it shined brighter, even lit up the blue in her eyes, so that they almost looked the way they used to. Her mother always told her stories of the ocean, and Esme imagined that the waves were the exact color of her eyes, glistening as they crashed down onto the shore.

A FLORIDA WINTER WONDERLAND NICANOR VERGARA Are you truly happy? It was around two-thirty in the morningand I still couldn’t sleep, so I decided I wanted to go for a walkon a chilly Florida night. It was thirty-six degrees when I checked the weather before I got dressed. An average winter day up north, but a rare moment to cherish in the South. I put on the thickest clothes I had to make sure I wouldn’t die, but also relished in the fact that it was one of the rare moments I could wear them. Clad in my thickest jeans, a hoodie, and a winter jacket, I set out for the quiet roads of my small college town.The usually bustling main road was empty, save for the occasional car or two passing by. The sound of their cold, metallic bodies cutting the cold wind, accompanied by the soft hum of their tires on the pavement served as the soundtrack for my aimless expedition.I looked up at the clear earlymorning sky at the stars and gave myself a goal: I would find a nice spot to look at the stars. However, the solace of starlight cannot be found on main roads, or even the vacant grounds on campus. No, I would have to find some place for myself. So, I walked. My shoes quietly rubbed against the sidewalks with every step. That sound was replaced with dirt and grass crunching beneath me when I stumbled across a dried-out pond behind some apartment buildings. It seemed like the perfect place to enjoy the view. The treetops ended at right around the place where the basin began to incline. However, as I started to trek downwards, I noticed a couple of ducks standing in the middle of the empty pond. As nice as the view would’ve been, I didn’twant to fend off angry ducks for it. So, I went back up the basin and started walking again. The humble sounds of my footsteps disturbing the earth were replaced once more with shoes on pavement. They tapped and scratched against the ground as I again wandered to find a nice spot to enjoy this cold Florida night.That pleasurable cacophony wasreplaced with the scratchy symphony of gravel as I walked through the school’s horticultural field. At least, that’s what I thought it was. Lining the gravel path was an assortment of young pine trees and low-lying shrubbery that could easily be mistaken for weeds. However, I found a picnic table tucked away in a dark corner of this meek observatory and found my spot.

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I sat down on the weathered wooden bench, which was far sturdier than I expected it to be. I rested my back and elbows on the table, creating a recliner with what I had, andlooked up.

Starlight peeking through an ocean of white and orange streetlights. The brightest stars of the constellations Leo and Gemini greeting me with warm gazes. With them, Orion’s faithful hounds, Canis Major and Canis Minor.

On that weathered bench in a small forest in my tiny college town, the night swept me up in its cold embrace and whispered nothingness into my ear. The eveningasked me, “who are you?” I am no one, just another twinkling star in the night sky. “Then what is your purpose?” I have none, I bear witness to the greatness of others. “Are you content as a bystander?” I don’t want to impose on the magnificent journey of life that others tread. “So, what does that make you?” Nothing. A ghost in the wind merely passingby. I am just a set of electrical pulses surging though neurons in a suit of molecules passing through space-time. I realized that. At last, I had an answer to the existential nightmare that has been introduced to a god-less world. I finally have an ideaof my placein the grand scheme of things. I am at peace.

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Above it, theLesser Dog, whose brightest star Procyon paled in comparison to the size and shine of its brother. How sad it must be to be compared to that greatness. Gemini’s twin heads, Castor and Pollux, shone before me as well. They seem so close together, but their relationship is only an illusion. In reality, they are lightyears apart from one another, gliding through space on their own solitary journeys.Lastly,Leo, the lion in the sky. Lions are typically associated with courage and tenacity, a sort of feral regality. However, the few stars that I could see of that mighty lion’s body were dim. Like they could fade away any second.

The gentle shifting of leaves in the cold wind. The same wind that carried the piercing scent of wood to my nose and nibbled at my face and hands. I looked up at the brightest star in our night sky, Sirius, belonging to the Great Dog, an awe. Hundreds of lightyears away two stars orbit around one another in a galactic dance, yet all I see is the twinkling of a little star.

HIGH SOCIETY LOSES ALTITUDE KIM FREDERICK HELLER III Roberta, George, Paul, and Margaret all find themselves at the same dinner party on a lonely Friday evening surrounded by everyone who is anyone in the city. Their ties are neat, their dresses fine, their shoes polished, their hair spectacular. A live band plays jazz music that hasn’t been groundbreaking in many decades. The function is being held at a mutual friend’s unreasonably large home and the four partygoers make droning small talk in a corner about other mutual friends and each other. The atmosphere is that of all gatherings of highprofile individuals—a feeling that the whole charade may explode at any second if any one person has the stupidity or madness to slip up—but since no one like that was invited, the potential energy remains just that. Roberta, George, Paul, and Margaret love to talk about nothing because to talk about something would mean to risk a shortening of their social stature. They are talking about nothing when they notice the queer, silent gentleman standing

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near the band with a sandwich halfway in his mouth. “Who is that?” Roberta’s upper lip curls unattractively. Her eyes betray nothing more than disgust, but her mind lights up at the thought of verbal sadistic humor. “Steven Lefkowitz,” answers Paul with characteristic eye-narrowing and brow-furrowing. “The most pitiful millionaire in existence. Made his fortune in computer hardware.” George’s fat face lights up with a derisive grin. “I heard he nearly went bankrupt buying non-profit zoos. Zoos! Can you believe that? Weirdo loves his animals.” The others shake their heads, grimacing as though the business of zoos physically pains them to think about. “Wonder who invited him?” Margaret, who happens to be Paul’s wife, sips her cocktail with all the finesse of an alcoholic. Paul is planning on divorcing Margaret, and silently praises himself every night for making her sign a prenuptial agreement. The four continue to stare at

Lefkowitz begins to grin. “I hear there’s something special planned for the entertainment tonight.” His eyes take on a mischievous appearance, moving from one discontented face to another as he sips a glass of water and adjusts his tie with a free hand. “Well whatever it is, I hope they bring more sandwiches, ‘cause I’m sure hungry.” George laughs nervously, but his chuckles cut off short and he looks away. Not even George, known for his well-acted façade of the jolly fat man, can laugh this encounter into something resembling normalcy. Lefkowitz’s grin morphs into a wide smile. He raises his eyebrows along with the corners of his mouth. “I suspect, if the rumors can be believed, the showing will be downright wild.” The others continue to stare stoically, refusing to let the slightest hint of anything cross their countenances. None of the other attendees have noticed the added tension, preoccupied as they are with their own personal, reputational tensions. It occurs to Roberta, George, Paul, and Margaret that Lefkowitz smiles as though he has the whole world nestled safely in the palms of his hands. Perhaps this is natural for a man as rich as Lefkowitz; but those

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Lefkowitz like teenaged bullies in a school cafeteria. They make no play at subtlety, relying on the obliviousness of their subject and his nonexistent social status to protect them. Lefkowitz eats his sandwich, glancing furtively around the room at everyone but the unhappy quartet. His glances seem anxious—but not fearful— as though he is anticipating something. Finally, he finishes his sandwich and gives the party of four a deliberate gaze and sheepish smile, strolling across the main room to where they stand, raising a hand in greeting. “Gentlemen,” Lefkowitz nods at Paul and George. “Ladies.” He acknowledges Margaret and Roberta similarly. The group now looks at each other with awkward smiles and wide eyes, as though they have just been caught red-handed scheming a great crime but are prepared to die before admitting to anything, and so look to one another for a cover story. “Nice night.” Paul offers Lefkowitz a tight-lipped smile. “Yes, it was.” No one smiles now. The group of four eye Lefkowitz as a group of hikers would eye a Komodo Dragon were they to come across one on their afternoon stroll. A not-atypical blend of revulsion and fear mars their faces.

who have known him can attest that the man usually plays the part of the nervous wreck. They go on like this, staring and saying nothing, for what feels like minutes until the party’s host--a woman named Greta Stevenson-strides over, appearing rather livid. “Steven Lefkowitz!” She practically shouts the name. The jazz music continues, but the adjacent conversations do not. “Who invited you here?” Lefkowitz shrugs and maintains his smile. “No one. I don’t usually attend parties I’m invited to.” Ms. Stevenson, an influential CEO with an unhealthy obsession for order, grows blue in the face at this. “Leave this instant!” Her facial skin begins to resemble a weekold bruise, her eyes threatening to pop out at Lefkowitz’s next transgression. “I was certainly hoping you’d say something like that.” Lefkowitz chuckles. All the party’s guarded conversations have ceased to exist at this point, and the multiracial jazz band’s music belies their own nervous thoughts. One does not wish to upset Greta Stevenson. And no one knows much about Steven Lefkowitz. Lefkowitz pulls his phone from his pants pocket and sends what appears to be a short text. Roberta, George, Paul, and

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Margaret start for the hall. “Well? We’re waiting!” Greta Stevenson looks ready to strangle the thin neck of Steven Lefkowitz right there in the main room. She breathes far too heavily for the host of a semi-formal event. “Well, wait no longer, Madam Stevenson! The show has just arrived!” With this grand announcement, Lefkowitz runs to the small in-home stage where the band plays and raises his arms to the sky. Everyone is puzzled for a moment— but only a moment. Lefkowitz and his associates are very punctual men; or, rather, very punctual mammals. The doors to the home crash inward with loud bangs, sending a collective jump through the mass of independently wealthy individuals in the main room. The jazz music stops, and with a “Wow!” out of the lead trumpet-player, a portly African-American man, the band and their white suits jump from the stage, for they have just seen a potentially frightening and certainly confusing cast of characters barge into the room: a group of six or seven chimpanzees each riding their very own burro (a small donkey). Shouts of “Oh my!” and wails of “My handbag! He’s got my handbag!” emanate from the throng of the well-dressed and wellmannered as the chimpanzees begin

in their subdued, expensive cars, Greta Stevenson stares at the wall with bleu cheese on her dress and ranch dressing on her shoes, and the jazz musicians collect their instruments, taking solace in the fact that they were paid in advance. No one is happy; except, of course, Steven Lefkowitz and his chimps. (Roberta, George, Paul, and Margaret are among the last to arrive home. In their haste to avoid disaster, they nearly found themselves trampled beneath a combination of hoofs and heels.) Greta Stevenson looks at Lefkowitz, who walks now around the room, corralling his chimps and burros with the help of a few animal trainers who must have been outside the house the whole time. “Is this because I fired you?” Her eyes speak of a fury not illustrated in her steady voice. “All those years ago?. I would have thought you’d have gotten over that by now.” Lefkowitz turns and smiles at Greta, his eyes as close to twinkling as eyes can get. “It has nothing to do with that, Greta.” He hands a banana to one of his ape associates. “I just don’t happen to like people like you, or the people you invite to your parties. And I just so happen to love chimpanzees.”

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their reign of terror. The primates seem to have been trained; trained, that is, in non-violent chaos. They do everything short of afflicting bodily harm to any of the party’s attendees, including thievery, disruption of the peace, and destruction of property. Steven Lefkowitz remains on stage with his arms stretched upward, the maniacal smile never leaving his face. The partygoers push their way out of the room as fast as they can possibly manage, but the going is slow as they must navigate both their fellow attendees and the riotous apes. The chimpanzees are nothing if not persistent; they continue, even as the room ever-so-slowly empties itself of warm bodies, to destroy, disrupt, and defile. They do not, however, defecate--they are potty-trained. Handbags are pilfered, nacho cheese is smeared, and booze is spilt. Vintage records and CDs fly through the air like frisbees as the chimpanzees demonstrate their athletic abilities. The burros delight in toppled piles of celery, carrots, and cauliflower, and even one woman’s bright orange wig finds itself among the digested. Within ten long minutes, the party is over, the house is a mess, and the guests’ nights are thoroughly ruined. The partygoers drive home

RACE TO THE FALLEN PEANUT SHELL ANSLEY MCCOY

It’s December of 2019. I take the boiled peanut shell out of my mouth and toss it into the bucket sitting in the middle of the table. As I wipe the peanut’s juice off of my chin, half of its shell hits the edge of the bucket and bounces off onto the brick floor. I jump out of my chair and race to pick it up before my dog, Claire, can get her beady eyes on it. The simple act of racing my dog to boiled peanut shells is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. It’s crazy how the things that seem constant in our lives, are the things that change and disappear so quickly. Let’s rewind sixteen years to when I’m three. I wrap my little hands around the ice bucket as I pull it down from its nook in the cabinet. I’m careful as I step off the chair onto the hardwood floors lining our kitchen. I paddle over to our ice maker and begin to scoop ice into the bucket. I leave little droplets of melting ice on the hardwood as I go, too

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excited to take the time to clean them up even though my dad will be pissed about the water stains later. It’s September in the McCoy Family Household, meaning it’s time for our autumn tradition of boiled peanuts, bourbon, and college football! I grab cups from the cupboard and bowls from the drawer, and carry them around the side of my house - careful not to drop them as I travel down the steps to our covered terrace. I set three place settings, one each for my mom, my dad, and myself. I place the ice filled bucket on the counter by the table, and then use my little legs to push myself up onto the tall chair. My two dogs, Buddy and Bandit, sit underneath me as I patiently wait for my parents. I sit for 15, 20, 30 minutes and my parents are still not downstairs. I’m beginning to wonder where they are, when I hear my dad frantically calling my name. He sprints down the steps and pauses when he sees

My dad then runs upstairs to get my mom (and, the bourbon), and they follow the droplet trail through the kitchen, down the stairs, to our boiled peanut table. We laugh together while we nibble on our traditional snack. My mom and dad pairing it with bourbon, while I drown it in a coca-cola. As I wipe a peanut’s juice off my chin and throw its shell into the bucket, it bounces off the side and tumbles to the ground. My dog, Buddy, scuttles over to the shell as my dad jumps out of his chair to wrestle it out of her pointed canines. He then explains the importance of picking up my fallen peanut shells - as they can be dangerous

Fast-forward five years, to a boiled peanut table full of people, a rival football game, and a race to the fallen peanut shell. It’s the third quarter in a nail-biting football game - The Georgia Bulldogs VS. Georgia Tech Yellowjackets. My family is dressed in red, in support of the Dawgs, while our family friends, the Rountrees, sit across the table from us are wearing gold, cheering for the Jackets. The cocky smiles my parents and I were wearing fade as Josh Nesbitt, Tech’s quarterback, scores a two point conversion, tying up the game. Before I know it my friend, Mattie, is taunting me, claiming the Yellow Jackets are going to win. So, as any eight year old would do, I bet her my candy stash in favor of the Dawgs. We then gulp down our cokes and shake on the bet. As a Bud Light commercial comes on, Mattie and I jump out of our chairs to refill our coca-colas. My dog, Bandit, lets out a yelp, so I pat his head in apology for landing on his leg.

I gush, “waiting on you! I’m ready for boileds and bourbon, Daddy!” Before I know it, he is bent over laughing. A proud smile takes over his face. At the young age of three, I had already mastered the family tradition of boiled peanuts and bourbon.

to dogs.

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me sitting at the high table. “Ansley, what are you doing” he questions. “I was worried sick about you!” he exclaims!

The newest member of the McCoy Family, Claire Dog, crawls over for some loving, and Mattie and I entertain ourselves by playing with my two dogs. Before we know it, Scott Howard’s booming voice is back and the fourth quarter begins.

trying to push towards Tech’s endzone, and Tech trying to push them back. With 30 seconds left, the stress of the game (and losing my candy stash) gets to me, so I start devouring boiled peanuts. I throw my shell into the bucket, and as I wipe the juice off my chin, my peanut’s shell goes Tech scores a touchdown. Mattie crashing towards the floor, right smiles. I drown my sorrow in at Bandit’s feet. I spring out of my boiled peanuts. Tech scores chair to retrieve it, and when I again. Mattie triumphantly look up Mattie is jumping up and sips her refilled coke. I frown down. Tech intercepted the ball. remembering the bet. The score is Georgia lost. The game is over. now 38-28, and Georgia is going to have to put in some serious Ten years later, my parents sit to work, especially if I want to keep the left of me, our family friends, Mattie’s dirty hands off of my the Kings, sit to my right, and butterfingers! As if they read my my two dogs, Claire and Asi, mind, the Dawgs score. Now it’s sit underneath me at our boiled 38-35. I smile. Mattie nervously peanut table. Georgia is playing gnaws on a boiled peanut. Georgia Alabama today, and with a table Tech then scores again, and full of Dawgs fans the night I’m starting to lose hope as the will either end in celebration score is now 45-35. Georgia will or in sorrow. The day before, I need a touchdown, a two point had flown home from Stetson conversion, and a field goal to University in Florida to spend my win the game. Of course, Mattie birthday weekend with my family. smiles. My only wish for my nineteenth birthday was for the Dawgs to With four minutes left in kick Big Al on his ass! While I the game A.J. Green scores wasn’t betting my candy stash this a touchdown for the Dawgs, year, this game still meant a lot to meaning we only need 3 points me. Afterall, it would be Georgia’s to tie it up! The ball moves up first National Championship in and down the field, with Georgia my lifetime. 64 PROSE

During the break, Bristol and I saunteer inside to play a game of pool. Our dads join in and like the football game, the dad’s team starts off strong. Bristol and I push back until Mr. Chuck - Bristol’s Dad sinks four balls back to back, completely annihilating us. Bristol and I drown our loss in a glass of bourbon, and then we return to the boiled peanut table. When

Scott Howard’s booming voice silences the conversation on the terrace, and we all return our attention to the screen. Alabama is the first to score in the second half, but Georgia quickly counters with a touchdown. My family cheers and the Kings smile. When Alabama scores again and again, Bristol - a UGA student- downs her drink. I eat a handful of boiled peanuts. We’re now in the fourth quarter of the game, and this year I’m mindful about ensuring that my peanut shells make it into the bucket. Afterall, I don’t want a repeat of the race to the fallen peanut shell of ‘08! With one minute left in the game, Alabama scores another touchdown. Georgia goes from having a 14 point lead in the first half to trailing by seven in the last minute of the game. As we watch the seconds tick down, we munch on boiled peanuts praying for a miracle. I guess it wasn’t fate for the Dawgs to win that night.

we sit down, I notice the pink blush in Bristol’s cheeks, which helps me remind myself to be mindful of how much bourbon I drink.

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As the game begins, we all snack on our boiled peanuts. My childhood friend, Bristol, and I giddelidy smile at each other, as this is the first year we are allowed to wash our peanuts down with bourbon...finally! The game starts quickly with Georgia scoring a touchdown in the first three minutes. The whole table cheers as the Dawgs take the lead. Before I know it, Alabama has tied the game back up. We boo, and drink our bourbon. Georgia scores two more touchdowns in the first half. At halftime, the score is 21-7 and it looks like my birthday wish is going to come true!

Unfortunately my fate for the remainder of the evening, was to take care of a drunk Bristol while hiding the fact that she was drunk from her parents. Needless to say, boiled peanuts are not always fun with bourbon. It’s one year later, and we’re back to December of 2019. I pick up the fallen peanut shell before my dog, Claire, gets her beady eyes on it. I rejoin my parents at the boiled peanut table, and we watch Kirby Smart bring the Dawgs to yet another loss against LSU. A chill runs through me, so I pull my jacket to my chest and sip on my bourbon to warm me up from the cool December air. If I’d known this would be my last time sitting at our boiled peanut table with my mother to my left, my father to my right, and my two dogs, Claire and Asi, sitting underneath me, I might have taken a mental picture. I would have absorbed the memory the same way my body was absorbing the cool December air. That’s the funny thing about memories, though. We never know when they are going to come and go. The beeping begins before the moving truck comes into view. As my mom points to boxes, my dad and I carry them from the home I grew up in to the truck that will take them to our new house. We get in our cars and follow the truck up I575 to our mountain house nestled in the sky. As the movers unload our precious belongings, they pull out our boiled peanut table which has been smashed by the hilly, winding drive. Seeing the decimated table brings tears to my eyes. This year boiled peanuts will be different for sure. We will find a new table to continue the McCoy Family Tradition. This year my mom will sit to my left, my dad will sit to my right, and my one dog, Asi, will sit beneath my feet. While places, people, and pets change, traditions can live on forever, even if they don’t completely remain the same. This year, when I go to wipe the peanut’s juice off of my chin, its shell will most likely bounce off of the bucket and hit the wooden floor. I’ll hop out of my chair and repeat a race to the fallen peanut shell, yet again.

PROSE

Babel

DESIREE ASCEVICH

One being moves through the wreckage. Slowly stepping on newly dead ground. The ash does not stir, there is no air to create such movement. A vacuum now sits where chaos and energy used to dance. His steps falter as a droplet appears on the ground in front of him, momentarily darkening the white dust in a small, neat circle. He hesitates. They fight so hard. Fleeing blindly, crying, shouting, begging. What a waste. Each meteor causes the ground the tremble savagely. A ghastly figure emerges on the rooftop beside me. Favored son.

Another circle appears. Shocked, he finds wetness on his face. He has not wept in… millennia. He wonders if things are so unchangeable. His mind has been changed before. Perhaps there is still… hope. He takes a step back hesitantly. This is an old, old trick. This, he has not done since time was in its infancy. He does it now.

Electricity is dead. The darkness makes me question myself. My vacillation ends as clusters of people squabble, envious of belongings. Even now they do not seek out betterment. They glare and scowl, ignoring the bursting blisters blooming on their skin. The wrath causes more mayhem. Planes drop bombs. Countries have been blown

Does this give him joy at last? No reply. The world rattles. The buildings will crumble. He leaves on a whisper. Pride came before the fall. It is time for this to end. The moon fractures. The tides untether. The volcanos erupt. Fragments of light stream through darkness.

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The world is a torment of sapphire midnights. Gaping holes that used to be stars rest mutely, greedy mouths that will never again be full. The silence is loud, echoing through empty space. No rustling wind, wildlife, electrical hums. Stillness after the clamor of death. The ashes fall more heavily as the atmosphere dies. Micro asteroids moving through the void. An end to bedlam. Observing the actions of my consequences. Alone at the end of the world, the peace is dizzying.

to dust. The warheads have come out. Mushroom clouds blossom across the surface. He steps deliberately. The drop pulls itself from the ash, soon followed by the first. Another step. Faster. Too fast. He watches a tower as it is built. The beginning of the end. Fights break out, spilling discontent and hatred. This is where man fell apart. He did not create this chaos; he was merely a construct of it. The men kill one another, He now knows what to do. Structures burn and crowds gather around people who claim they can make things right. Liars. Gluttons for punishment. Locked away with their food stores while others starve. Beef shortages and crop rot will spread quickly. Food will be as scarce for the wealthy as it was for the children in the streets they ignored. Churches flooded with calls, but this is their answer. Their slovenly pleas grow as the planet dissolves into chaos. Waiting for an absolution that will not come. He understands now what must be done. What must change. Hope alights within a hopeless soul. He steps forward and finds smoke lingering in the air. Not the smoke

PROSE

of a world consumed by destruction, but of industry. There is excitement, though restlessness slithers, carried by the same wind that broke the first tower. Not far enough yet. He steps forward again. Pestilence is gleeful. They barely notice. They lust for power, fame, and fortune, carnal pleasures, and violence. I sense only relief as the satellites fall from the sky. The confusion is to be expected. They look for reasons and logic in their science. People hoard money - revolting. The greed that has lodged itself so deep in the soul of humanity. I will pull it out by the root. Less access has created more avarice. They will never realize - they are pitiful, loathsome creatures. The world is a blur of violence and nightmare. This is the time. He finds Him standing on a rooftop as the ground shakes beneath their feet. Are you happy, now? Before, in this time, in this place, he left. Not now. He grabs Him, clinging tight as he takes a step backward, dragging Him along. Another step, and then another. It is nearly too much, but he continues. Humanity is a lost cause. The

damage runs too deep. I have tried. I have sent my own child to be slaughtered by the beasts they have become. They have taken it all for granted. War is rampant, egged on by Conquest. Famine is unchecked, and Death is on a rampage. Too few of them care any longer. I will have to start fresh. A new world, a new creation. I have uncaged Pestilence. His brothers are already free, perhaps he can tip the scales and wake them up. This must end. Until.

They watch as the people build a tower, the men working together in love.

They watch, as the fights start, as the divide spills.

They watch, as it falls.

This is where you started it.

Here is where your pride began their downfall. This is when you made monsters out of the men you claimed to love. Fix it.

There. I’ve done it, just as I said I would. Not a bad job for only seven days, wouldn’t you say?

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There, he tells Him.

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Destiny Rodriguez ONE ON ONE INTERVIEW WITH TOUCHSTONE’S COVER ARTIST

Rodriguez is a senior digital arts major with a minor in journalism. She has been creating digital art for eight years now, starting her artistic journey in high school. Beginning as a photographer, she took the leap into the world of digital art because her sister is a digital artist as well. Rodriguez has “always been interested in digital art” as a photographer, and this interest inevitably became part of her pieces. With the pandemic in full swing, Rodriguez has found it hard to get out and take pictures of her own, so she deconstructs and designs her pieces using found images. “Normally I use my friends for models and stuff, but I haven’t been able to see them and everything’s online,” Rodriguez said. Despite this, her art style has grown to be “a little bit more experimental” and Rodriguez thinks “it’s a lot of fun to just see what I can create, without having to worry about taking the images.” Rodriguez looks up to artists like Frank Moss and Roger Mattos for inspiration, as well as album art covers and films. Rodriguez’s favorite genre of films is horror, and she expresses how she “ kind of likes to focus on something that feels older but has a more contemporary feel,” regarding how horror films are influential to her work. “Paper Voyage,” Touchstone 2021’s cover, is a picturesque scene of an ocean, with a paper boat floating amongst the gentle waves. Two boys are the boat’s passengers, navigating the sea together. The older boy points off into the distance, showing something unbeknownst to the viewer to the younger out of the two. To Rodriguez, the two boys are “ two brothers, and they’re lost. And they’re growing up together, and they’re kind of finding their own way.” To make this piece, Rodriguez scrolled

ooking at Destiny Rodriguez’s work, you would never guess that she has an affinity for, and is deeply inspired by, horror films.

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Rodriguez has two other pieces featured in Touchstone 2021, “In Quiet Rooms” and “Disfigure” both which were created with a similar method to “Paper Voyage.” “In Quiet Rooms” shows a fully furnished doll house, with the viewer getting a glimpse of the kitchen. Upon further inspection, there is a hand reaching through the open doorway into the kitchen, seemingly in search for something on the island. Looking even deeper, in the back right window of the kitchen peers in a doll, with hair framing her face and glassy, lifeless eyes. For “In Quiet Rooms,” Rodriguez explains how, “what I picture in my head for this is a doll that’s living in a house. And it’s a fake world, and your kind of interacting with it. But at the same time, there’s this sense of stillness and panic. Like, you’re not sure what’s going to happen next.” The inspiration for the dollhouse present in “In Quiet Rooms” was drawn from the movie “Annabelle” from The Conjuring franchise, one of Rodriguez’s favorites. For this piece, Rodriguez stated that she “loves the idea of something that’s really mellow and calm, and that feels inviting and reminds you of your childhood nostalgia And turning that into something that feels unnatural. And kind of looking at it, I feel like I’m holding my breath. Like, you’re waiting for something to happen. And I really like that aspect of it.” With that being said, Rodriguez’s favorite part of creating this piece was “Just getting to create something that’s not inherently mine. To build

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With Rodriguez graduating this May, her feelings of uncertainty prompted her to weave this narrative behind “Paper Voyage.” Rodriguez confesses that “I feel like one of the biggest things I felt recently, when creating is the idea of the purpose of creating. Like, what I’m going to do in the future and the idea of growing up and not being ready. And kind of feeling like having a sinking feeling. Every time I think of graduating, I’m like, Oh, God, what am I gonna do next? Yeah, just the idea of you look out to the sea for miles and all you see is blue. That something’s out there. But you can’t see it. So, you’re like, ‘this is terrifying.’”

through images, looking for hours for the perfect pictures that match the scene she has developed in her head. “Sometimes between doing writing assignments and stuff, I’ll be like, okay, I can’t do this any longer. I need something else to focus on. So, I’ll just scroll and find something that I like that I think I can make something out of. So, I found the paper boat first. And I was like, create something new that you don’t really see. You think of paper, it’s not really something that’s strong, it’ll crumble and fall apart.” Rodriguez explained that she felt the urge to put the paper boat in an ocean because “I’ve never been a really strong swimmer and growing up in Florida, I feel like that’s a no no. So, I do like the idea of focusing on the ocean because there’s so much that you don’t know that’s out there, 80% of it is on unexplored and that’s terrifying to me.”

something completely new.” “Disfigure” is a portrait of a young women, bathed in golden light. There is a piece of lace draped over her head, causing the outlines of the pattern to cascade over face. Her face is morphed, almost as if it is being stretched or pulled apart. What appears to be one image, is actually multiple layered, and Rodriguez “became really interested layering and using two different images and combining it into one to just create something new and using the same subject and just being able to take one person and morph them into something that’s unrecognizable.” Despite this disfigurement, Rodriguez still feels as if “there’s still sort of like a delicacy, intricate, perspective about it. Like, there’s a lot of detail with the lace, and just being really soft, but at the same time, disrupting something.” This piece took Rodriguez about thirty minutes and she likes to do quick projects like these from timeto-time because she doesn’t really have to think about it, and just gets to make something that she thinks is interesting to look at. “Disfigure” for Rodriguez is about self-image, and how “You never get to see yourself the way other people see you. And there’s that detail and the beauty” and how this can sometimes be startling, but beautiful. Rodriguez creates her pieces whenever she needs a break from the monotony of day-to-day life, or whenever she feels the impulse to.

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As an artist, Rodriguez does not always know the purpose behind a piece before she makes it, and sometimes her pieces have no purpose at all. For Rodriguez, purpose is not always important for her, and does not believe that every piece of art that she creates has to be impactful. Rodriguez feels that “A lot of the time, I’ll hear artists talks, they’re like, ‘Oh, this piece is so purposeful.’ And I’m like, that’s, that’s so much stress that you’re putting on yourself. It doesn’t always have to have a meaning. And you can just think something looks cool, and it looks beautiful. And you can appreciate it for what it is.” This being said, Rodriguez still thinks that some pieces can have purpose, just not all of them need to. “The meaning of life, what is the meaning of life, maybe some people don’t have a greater purpose in life, you’re just enjoying it for what it is. That’s how I feel about art a lot of the times is, it can have its purpose, and you can use it to create something beautiful or ugly, or whatever you want.” Post-graduation, Rodriguez hopes to become an artist in residency somewhere abroad, with her sights set specifically on South Korea or Sweden. Rodriguez feels that her pieces do not have much in common with one another and feels that an artist residency will help her develop works with overarching themes, as well as an “end goal, your end goal is to create something, but you get the freedom to do that on your own time without having to work around your other schedules and your other responsibilities in life.” For her senior research, Rodriguez is

For Rodriguez, the best part about interacting with art and being an artist is that “you can interpret it any way that you want, you don’t have to give an explanation. And that’s kind of the best part about releasing it into the world, other people can perceive it the way they want.” With all this being said, at the end of the day, being an artist for Rodriguez means no limitations. “The only limit is your imagination and your ability, but you can always improve. There’s always somebody else you can learn from, you can learn from each other, can teach yourself, because I feel like there’s so many mediums that you can explore and just getting to mix those, I feel like is a lot of fun.” Being an artist is interwoven with every aspect of Rodriguez’s life, and it just comes naturally to her. For Rodriguez, art is not about how it impacts her, it is about “just getting to explore. Like, there’s no limit, I can do whatever I want. There are so many ways that you can use it.” The art that Rodriguez produces is an extension of herself. Rodriguez’s work is a testament to how art can be meaningful and important, but also how it can just be. Rodriguez will not only continue her work post-graduation, but will continue to experiment with new mediums, always working to allow room for a creative avenue in her life.

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focusing on the Anthropocene, the idea of human existence and its impact on Earth. Rodriguez is fascinated by how we as humans have only been here for a short amount of time but have had a significant impact on the planet. She travels to state parks and take pictures of them void of humanity, then takes audio recordings of the same parks full of life and human interaction and plans to juxtapose the two to show how our actions impact nature, and how nature and its beauty is taken for granted. Eventually, Rodriguez wants to add an interactive element, where the closer you get to a piece, the louder the sounds become.

COLOPHON The 2021 editions of Touchstone Literary Journal was printed by Independent Printing in Daytona Beach, FL, with a press run of 300 copies. Student designers created the journal using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop on iMac computers. The journal consists of 80 pages, and fonts including Adobe Garamond Pro, St. Ryde, and Brandon Grotesque. The 4-color process cover is printed on soft touch coating paper. Touchstone features additional online content on hatternetwork.com, which is student created, managed, and produced. All submissions are reviewed, selected, and edited by the Touchstone staff and selection committee. All literary and artistic work featured in Touchstone is created by Stetson students. Special thanks to those who submit their work and to all our supporters.

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TOUCHSTONE

Touchstone 2021

Articles inside

High Society Loses Altitude - Kim Frederick Heller III

A Florida Winter Wonderland - Nicanor Vergara

Race to the Fallen Peanut Shell - Ansley McCoy

Babel - Desiree Ascevich

Esme - Madison Broboff

Sunflower Daydreams - Cullen Harkins

Glas Wen - Alexis Waller

A Middle Eastern Poem - Ruby Rosenthal

Confessions of an Intern - Sarah Payne

Too Tight Gym Clothes - Ally Crown

A Tribute to The Flightless - Stephanie Hanson

For the Sun Always Finds a Way - Xanthippe Pack-Brown

Quiet Moments - Maia Robbins

If Autumn Was a Woman - Willie Bess